It was inevitable that rival claimants for the honor of the invention should crop up on every side, but, after years of bitter litigation, Morse succeeded in defending his title, and honors began to pour in upon him. It is worth remarking that the Sultan of Turkey, supposedly the most benighted of all rulers, was the first monarch to acknowledge Morse as a public benefactor. That was in 1848; but the monarchs of Europe soon followed, and in 1858, a special congress was called by the Emperor of the French to devise some suitable testimonial to the great inventor. But perhaps the most fitting testimonial of all were the ceremonies at the unveiling of the Morse monument in New York City in 1871. Delegates were present from every state in the Union, and at the close of the reception, William Orton, president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, announced that the telegraph instrument before the audience was in connection with every other one of the ten thousand instruments in America, and that, beside every instrument an operator was waiting to receive a message. Then a young operator sent this message from the key: "Greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity throughout the world. Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace, good-will to men." Then the venerable inventor, the personification of dignity, simplicity and kindliness, bent above the key, and sent out, "S. F. B. Morse." A storm of enthusiasm swept over the audience, and the scene will never be forgotten by any who took part in it. The proudest boast of many an old operator is that he received that message. Death came to the inventor a year later, and on the day of his funeral, every telegraph office throughout the land was draped in mourning. Although to Morse belongs all the credit for the invention of the telegraph, it should, in justice to one man, be pointed out that it would have been impossible but for a discovery which preceded it--that of the electro-magnet. To Joseph Henry, the great physicist, first of Princeton, then of the Smithsonian Institution, this invention is chiefly due. We have already spoken of Professor Henry's work in science, but none of it was more important than his invention, in 1828, of the modern form of electro-magnet--a coil of silk-covered wire wound in a series of crossed layers around a soft iron core, and in 1831, he had used it to produce the ringing of a bell at a distance. It is this magnet which forms the basis of every telegraph instrument--is essential to it, and is the foundation of the entire electrical art. Let it be added to this great scientist's credit that he never sought to patent any of his inventions, giving them, as Franklin had done, free to all the world.